Re: Lojbanizing umlaut

[Logical Language Group <lojbab>]

la lojbab. cusku di'e

> 1) when in doubt, follow the spelling - linguists are of-ten (emphasis on the
> non-silent 't') wrong about language and its nature  (Gary is a professional
> linguist, i.e. translator, for the US Air Force).

But the doubt had better be a substantial, informed doubt.

> 2) Lojban ignores rounding, so back unrounded is the same as back rounded.
> But then we didn;t really discuss this 7 years ago, so this is an arbitrary
> post facto ruling on your original dicussion and what it meant.

Nevertheless, I think it is pretty well an established rule by now.

> 3) Use diphthongs to trnascribe these, possibly "ui" for u: and "oi" for o:

Gag.  Goethe as Geute [goit@]?  Unspeakable.

> He was unwilling to go so far as to urge "o'e" for the latter, and none of us l
> like the glide "o,e" which is more like a diphthong, but rather unLojbanic.
> He noted that English does something quite similar in borrowing some umlauted
> words, leaving up to posterity to figure out exactly how to pronounce
> "Goethe" if you are unfamilair with German phonology.

Too right.  My mother, then Marianne Ordon, used to live in Detroit, where there
is a Goethe Street.  She once made a collection of the pronunciations used
by streetcar conductors [Commonwealth: tram guards].  One common form was
"gee-tee", which isn't too bad, but then there was "goat-y" and even the
obvious, but hopeless, "go-eeth".  (She was a native German speaker,
with near-native English, who taught German at Wayne.)

> 3) is the only suggestion that hasn't been proposed in this iteration of the 
> discussion, so I will add it to the stack of possible techniques.

A good thing, too, because it sucks big time, or as Nick once said anent
"rozgu", "deserves to die in the arse".

> Nora's opinion is that with names of people, the ultimate source must be
> either the person himself or the namer, as to how it should best be
> pronounced Lojbanized.

Excellent well.

> For people where this isn't possible (dead ones, etc.)
> and for places of uncertain pronunciation,

What "places of uncertain pronunciation"?  There are places whose names have
more than one pronunciation, certainly (New Orleans, e.g.), and there are names
of whose pronunciation some Lojbanist may not be certain (I only found out
the other day how to pronounce "Otranto", the name of a city in Italy), but
these are two separate issues.

> there will no doubt be multiple
> transliterations into Lojban, as with English (how many versions of "Beijing"
> have existed in the American press in the last 50 years),

Only two: "Beijing", which is Pinyin, and "Peking", which is not Wade-Giles
but rather reflects an old version of Mandarin, prior to about the 14th
century, before the "ki" -> "ji" sound change.  It's also possible that
"Peking" reflects the influence of some kind of Southern Chinese, where
no such sound change took place (in Cantonese, e.g., it's "pak7a king1").

During the period 1935-1949 or so, when the Nationalist capital was in
Nanjing (Nanking), the name "Beijing" = "north-capital" was thought
inappropriate, and it was changed to "Beiping" = "north-peace".  This
got Wade-Gilesified into "Peip'ing", often written without the apostrophe
as "Peiping".  (This is why WG is such a poor system: it doesn't degrade
gracefully.  Leave out an apostrophe, umlaut, or circumflex accent, and the
meaning disappears.)

>  and usage or input
> from a local native speaker will decide which one sticks for the long term.

The latter, we hope, not the former.  Yet native speakers aren't infallible
guides to their own phonology, either, witness the various Chinese-speakers
on sci.lang who insist that English /b/ = Chinese /b/, despite the fact that
the former is usually voiced and the latter usually isn't.

> So lets do our best guesses and presume that some will sooner or later
> get changed when a Lojbanist who knows better tells us that we are culno loi
> kalci.

Except that by that time it may be too late, and we will be stuck with
monstrosities like Eng. "Leghorn" = It. "Livorno".

Sorry, I'm a little testy this morning.  I do realize we can only do the best
we can.

-- 
John Cowan		sharing account <lojbab@access.digex.net> for now
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban.